Life could be for a whole forest of
years, but dying took just as long as one
wished. Condemeign reckoned he might as
well do the world a bad turn while he was
about it. One might as well have one's
little joke. The world had had one on him.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories January 1952.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
With a stroke of his pen, Condemeign signed a death sentence on atoffish nephew and condemned an older and even more lethal bore of abrother to a swinish end. The new provisions of the will took mostof what Condemeign had left in his bank balance. He sighed. Therewas just so much undiluted evil that one might create with justabout twice the money he had signed away. He might also have writtenanother Greater Testament, one that would have corrupted, instead ofadmonished. But the unconscious Villons and Des Esseintes of his worldwere hapless, constricted anachronisms. The universe had expanded, but,somehow, it had also fenced in common elbow room.
The other details took only another minute. The apartment would berepossessed by the housing authorities. The car would be melted downinto cash to satisfy certain codicils of the wills. Odds and ends wereplainly earmarked for the trash chutes, destined to wind up part of agreat garbage boat hurtling into the sun, to be reduced to light andwarmth.
Beyond that, he thought, ruminating on the promises of Nepenthe,Incorporated's slick paper brochure that had fallen into his hand,and barring, of course, what he was wearing at present, there wasa comforting zero. Not even the mice would get that. There were nomice, no insects nor even a great variety of bacilli on the greatthree-mile-square cube spinning its slow orbit one hundred thousandmiles beyond the limits of the atmosphere. The brochure had been morethan insistent on that point. The little distractions were to vanish.Nothing was to mar the serenity or adventure of the final hours or days.
Condemeign did not bother to glance round the tidy, clean room. He tooka swig of gin and picked up the telephone receiver, dialing with hisfree hand. When the receiver clicked and a rather corpsy female voicegreeted him at the other end of the wire he spoke his name into themouthpiece and hung up. Then he finished the gin and waited.
The man who came for him could not have been told from a thousand. Hisface had a slow, blurred look, as though someone had blotted it witha sponge while it was drying. His clothes were seasonal, decent andreasonably gay. Condemeign could not place him as a latter-day Charon,but then he remembered that there was an inevitable difference betweenthe man who takes your ticket and the navigator who swings the steelcoracle out into the Styx.
The ride to the spaceport was curiously dull. Condemeign, havingembarked upon oblivion, realized instantly the futility of even onefinal journey. A dry disappointment crinkled his tongue. He leanedforward in the aircar's seat to call a sardonic halt, but it wasnot even necessary for his companion to put out a restraining hand.Condemeign relaxed. His pulse had not accelerated by the slightestdegree. But that could only be because he wasn't staring into blackjaws as yet. Barbiturates in a bathroom in sufficient doses were simplybourgeois. The way to end, as Nepenthe promised, was on a granderscale, with the cosmos a bated spectator and the sun exploding in one'sface.
They walked to the small tender. Condemeign had been curious as to whenthe thin sheaf of banknotes in his pocket was expected to change hands.His guide halted at the flight of steel steps and s